I am going to attempt to address the common nitpicks in one fell swoop:
1. Rushed publication, plot quality, grammar, etc. Get over yourselves. This is a pre-print for an instant-Nobel, next-tier-of-civilization level discovery. The proper publication will come in due time. Waiting for a more complete verification is a sheltered view. Being first matters. Things changed after the J/Psi discovery in 1974. For those that don't know, Sam Ting discovered it first, yet sat on it for months waiting for a complete verification. Then Richter's group also discovered it months later and Ting was forced to publish at the same time and share the Nobel. This changed the publication attitude in the field significantly. Being first matters.
2. "Terrible science." Again, get over yourselves. Just because the preprint doesn't match your taste specifically doesn't mean it's bad science. You can't satisfy everyone- there will ALWAYS be someone who complains about some missing measurement or plot they view as essential. Most of the time, the 'missing' component is directly related to their own work. In other words, people want to see what they understandd as being important to them, also reflected in other publications. That does not mean it's a valid criticism. It's nitpicking.
The most realistic timeline is 2-3 months for a positive verification. 6 months for a negative verification. If it works, it will be quicker because a positive reproduction needs less work. A negative verification needs to be more thorough and will take more time.
> 2. "Terrible science." Again, get over yourselves. Just because the preprint doesn't match your taste specifically doesn't mean it's bad science. You can't satisfy everyone- there will ALWAYS be someone who complains about some missing measurement or plot they view as essential. Most of the time, the 'missing' component is directly related to their own work. In other words, people want to see what they understandd as being important to them, also reflected in other publications. That does not mean it's a valid criticism. It's nitpicking.
Not knowing the precise Tc for the material isn't nitpicking that is pretty basic ("above 400C" isn't a very precise measurement). Questioning if their graph showing the Meissner effect isn't really showing the Meissner effect isn't really some obscure criteria.
Bet we get results a whole lot quicker than that as well.
Their PPMS is limited to 400K. There's nothing they can do about that. So yes, it is a nitpicking. I've used the same instrument, that's the max temperature quantum design allows without forking over more money. It matters to get the results out there and be first.
I completely agree. I see many people commenting that the document has bad grammar or charts, completely ignoring that they probably authored it in Korean. Also looks like Kwan and HT Kim are fighting who gets to be 3rd Nobel winner so any problems with quality of the layout are easily explained by this.
One thing that is a green flag in my opinion is that apparently they had a sample for a long time (year+) so I find it unlikely they made an obvious measuring mistake.
But as always, most would love to have this be true and sometimes this gets better of us.
What do you think the chances are of it being a measurement/instruments error?
Edited to add: I am not a physicist. I don't know the subtleties of measuring experiments, and it was not my intention to state that there was a measurement error. I just wanted to ask someone for their assessment of the chances it was an error.
It's a little depressing that people are so quick to assume the worst of others, but I get why. The online flamewars fought over every announcement of this type would definitely put people on guard. Heck, on the UAP thread yesterday I immediately leapt to snarking about extraordinary announcements being bogus and I feel bad that I probably attacked it for no reason other than to feel cool: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36886221
IANAS, but science Twitter seems to think 1) authors aren't clowns but 2) there's a non-zero chance they've misinterpreted non-SC effects because 3) there's missing or inconsistent data that would conclusively prove SC
Small. Imperfect contact, unplugged terminals, etc. These are not 1st year grad students who don't know what they are doing. The authors have decades of research and fabrication experience, and publications to back it up. Comments that insinuate it could be those kind of novice mistakes (other comments on HN/reddit, not yours) are frankly insulting and speaks to a profound arrogance in being unable to accept a new discovery.
Compared to recent controversial results claiming the exact same thing (actually, more restrictive than this claim), it's not insulting it is what you should expect. The recent situation with Dias this year[1] is now under investigation as a case of data fabrication and he didn't even claim to have ambient pressure.
Frankly there are too many details missing to trust them. They've fabricated a thin film but not characterized it. It is well known that the properties of a material change when you go from bulk to thin film with a big dependence on the thickness. They don't mention how the resistance of this thin film is measured - that's important for what artifacts you might expect to see in your measurements (van der Pauw vs Hall bar measurements are the standard but they don't mention using either). Without characterizing the thin film it's also difficult to know, chemically and structurally, what you are measuring. I don't see any data confirming the quality of the thin film. The way the data is presented is such that it can be misleading, showing I-V curves instead of resistance when you are really trying to say the resistance is what is changing. The first paper doesn't even mention the insulator-metal transition that is present in the second paper which is bizarre - this is important if you are also claiming a superconductor transition close by and you would expect some discussion of this behaviour.
All of these are things that, one would hope, will be picked up by the reviewers as low hanging fruit before even really delving into the detail of the theory they present.
Decades of experience alone should not be trusted. Anyone can make a mistake, and not all the authors can be present for every experiment.
I apologize if I came across as insinuating it was an error, I was just asking you for your assessment of the chances it could be an error.
I'm not well versed in the subtleties of physics experiment measurement, so I figured I'd ask. It's difficult for a layperson to determine which "side" is right when battle lines are drawn after these types of announcements.
I know, I did not think for a moment that you were making such an accusation. I was referring to the other comments on HN/reddit over the past week making those accusations. Sorry if my comment came off that way.
Agreed. Skepticism is not only necessary but welcomed. But some of the comments are painting these guys like they are clowns. A bit of digging shows they've been working on this in some part since 1999 and that they were able to secure funding a few years back. And since then they've brought on other highly credible people and have in fact have been able to build this material awhile now.
This isn't some grad students that just stumbled upon something they mistook for something else. There's a really good chance this is legit and that lots of physics will need to be looked at.
Pretty much agree on criticisms of sloppiness. First off this is a preprint. More importantly, rushing to put a stake in the ground is reasonable in this case. if they are right 'instant Nobel' is just the half of it. The authors are guaranteed a place in the scientific pantheon.
1. Rushed publication, plot quality, grammar, etc. Get over yourselves. This is a pre-print for an instant-Nobel, next-tier-of-civilization level discovery. The proper publication will come in due time. Waiting for a more complete verification is a sheltered view. Being first matters. Things changed after the J/Psi discovery in 1974. For those that don't know, Sam Ting discovered it first, yet sat on it for months waiting for a complete verification. Then Richter's group also discovered it months later and Ting was forced to publish at the same time and share the Nobel. This changed the publication attitude in the field significantly. Being first matters.
2. "Terrible science." Again, get over yourselves. Just because the preprint doesn't match your taste specifically doesn't mean it's bad science. You can't satisfy everyone- there will ALWAYS be someone who complains about some missing measurement or plot they view as essential. Most of the time, the 'missing' component is directly related to their own work. In other words, people want to see what they understandd as being important to them, also reflected in other publications. That does not mean it's a valid criticism. It's nitpicking.
The most realistic timeline is 2-3 months for a positive verification. 6 months for a negative verification. If it works, it will be quicker because a positive reproduction needs less work. A negative verification needs to be more thorough and will take more time.